For more than a decade, London’s much-maligned South Bank Arts Centre has been talking about reinventing itself, without much actual progress. But two years ago, with the Barbican Centre unveiling a major upgrade across the Thames, things got serious on the South Bank. “Enter, in 2002, as chairman the former banker and press baron Lord Hollick, whose close links with New Labour and reputation for hard-headedness could only be welcome… Together with the supervisory architect, Rick Mather, they have managed to save the SBC by thrashing out a modified longer-term version of the development which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and funding bodies find acceptable.”